Youth community

Are you interested in community life? Do you have a break in your studies or work and you would like to live something different and useful? The Youth Community is an initiative to live as a community among the poor within the organisation Poverello. Poverello welcomes the poor for basic needs in 15 houses across Belgium. In Brussels many are also welcomed overnight. We look to meet people where they are, without imposing ourselves.

We wish to welcome young persons who would like to commit for a time to a life of prayer, community and social engagement with the poor. Searching for ways to live together, with compassion and intention. The Poverello Youth Community´s work within the community of Poverello includes cleaning, serving meals, and preparing prayers. The aim of the project is to grow in our understanding of how to live the gospel in freedom.

To live this here in Poverello, it is important to carry mutual respect and trust, to be willing to create life every day, to understand that in giving yourself you will receive yourself and the willingness to deepen your faith by community life. This shared life will be created and sustained by prayers, meals, recreational activities and reflecting on our own thoughts and experiences. You will be accompanied on this way of faith by people who believe in a better world.

Practical information

We are located in the centre of Brussels, in the borough Marolles. Approximately 100 volunteers help here weekly. There will be opportunities to discover other houses of Poverello as well.

Young people aged between 18 and 35 are welcomed. A stay of a couple of months is preferred. You have to be health insured in Belgium. French or Dutch is not required, a willingness to learn is. Housing and food are included.

We schedule activities to help build community life. If you play an instrument, please bring it. It is great if you can bring a bicycle and helmet. Volunteers have one free day a week.

“It convinced me that Jesus truly came to everyone, to every single human being on the Earth – it doesn’t matter if poor or rich, oriented in liturgy or not, homeless or totally the opposite. We are loved by Him without conditions.”

"Many of those who are served come because they are not seen on the street, but somehow society still expects much of them. Here they are seen and able to just be. Somehow, we are meeting each other's weaknesses together. We’re in communion with others and ourselves in a way I’m not sure I ever would have been able to see before Poverello was in my life. Where’s life among the homeless or seemingly purposeless? It’s here and sometimes I get to see it."

"The atmosphere created in Poverello is surrounded by a very basic and human sense of love and care, which can be discovered and cultivated by each of us in this place. The work, the possibility to have an active prayer life, the sharing and learning from others and being part of a community, have called me back to Poverello since first time I had been there."